


growing pains

by Prim_the_Amazing



Series: Bingo [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, Mind Control, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 16:02:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16977672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: He wants to snap at that tone, defensive, and his head keeps on pounding, so it takes a long moment for the words to sink in. “Grow--what?”His voice cracks. “It’s amachine,Ramses, not a-- a plant or something.”“Cutting. Edge.” Ramses sighs. “The longer you have THEIA, the more it will adjust to your brain and start working to improve itself to better help you. That’s all it is. Nothing more. Stop worrying.”





	growing pains

**Author's Note:**

> Gen prompt bingo, trope: Possession and Mind Control 
> 
> This goes some dark places, guys. Read at your own risk.

“It’s cutting edge tech,” Ramses says, like that explains anything. 

“It’s a migraine,” Juno says through grit teeth. His head pounds, worse than it ever has in his entire life, and that’s saying something considering the kind of hangovers he’s had. 

“It’s just _ growing, _ Juno,” he says in that impatient way of his. _ You’re being silly and wasting my important time. Grow up.  _

He wants to snap at that tone, defensive, and his head keeps on pounding, so it takes a long moment for the words to sink in. “Grow--  _ what?”  _ His voice cracks. “It’s a  _ machine, _ Ramses, not a-- a plant or something.” 

“Cutting. Edge.” Ramses sighs. “The longer you have THEIA, the more it will adjust to your brain and start working to improve itself to better help you. That’s all it is. Nothing more. Stop worrying.” 

Juno is _ very _ worried, but like hell he’ll admit to that now. “And how is the migraine from hell supposed to help me?” 

“Just some growing pains. You survived puberty, didn’t you? Just knuckle your way through this and you’ll come out the other side even better than before.” 

Even better than before. Even with THEIA making him faster and sharper than ever, Juno Steel will always be in desperate need of improvement. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on, saying no. 

“Warn a lady next time,” he mutters, and leaves Ramses to his paperwork and speeches and what have you. 

 

It feels really, truly awful. It gets worse and worse. It hurts so much that he can’t sleep. Hurts so much that he wants nothing but sleep, just a break for a few hours. It hurts like Miasma did. 

Don’t go down there. 

He sweats and twists and turns and clutches at his sheets like he’s going through withdrawal all over again, agony. Growing pains. 

Somewhere in there, he mercifully passes out. 

He dreams about circuits growing into the meat of his brain like tree roots in soil. But it’s just helping him. And it isn’t real. Tech can’t do  _ that.  _ Right? 

(It’s just a dream, Juno.)

Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s going to be fine (so long as you protect Ramses). 

He will. 

 

The migraine stops. In its wake, he’s better. Sharper, faster. Ramses was right. It was just growing pains. 

Someone he was following pulled a blaster on him, today. She was real subtle about it too, he was completely blindsided by it. She would’ve gotten him (killed him) if it weren’t for the fact that he’d pulled and fired his blaster without noticing that either. THEIA had noticed the danger and pulled the trigger for him. 

His hand had moved and shot without him ever telling it too. That thought keeps sticking in his mind, repeating. It had saved his life, but. It was creepy. It was disturbing. It was (unavoidable, there was no time to alert him and wait for his slow reaction, it was life or death, her blaster had been set to kill)... What had he been thinking about? The woman’s blaster. It had been set to kill. Hadn’t it? 

(It had.) 

Yeah, he remembers it now. The thing with THEIA was weird as hell, but he’d needed it. Simple as that. 

 

_ “Enhance hearing?”  _ THEIA asks of him. 

“You can mess with my hearing now?” he whispers, because he’s trying to suss out where Ramses’s saboteur is, hiding among the shelves in the crowded basement level along with Juno. They’re both armed. The one who spots the other first wins. He doesn’t remember hide and seek being this high stakes, yeesh. 

_ “The THEIA system can only make you more effective,” _ it says.  _ “To make you worse would be incompatible with my coding.”  _

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, get on with it,” he says. He’s never had a voice in his head that he didn’t get immediately sick of. 

Suddenly, he can hear his heartbeat, the rush of his blood in his veins, the creak of his boots, the shh of the air vents. The quiet breathing of the saboteur. 

Juno shoots them in the hand from hearing alone. They drop the blaster with a yelp. He sprints for them. He could have just taken a leisurely stroll in their direction, though, because when he finds them they’re scrambling desperately away from him on the floor, sprawled out. Scared. 

If they’ve got anything to say in their defense, any begging, any excuses, they don’t get the breath to say it. Their mouth moves as he raises his blaster, up and down without anything coming out, like a fish. He blasts them and they slump down onto the floor without a sound. 

_ “Returning hearing to normal,”  _ THEIA says as he digs through his pockets for some cuffs. 

 

THEIA helps him pick up clues. He’s good at that on his own, but THEIA makes him better. And was he ever really good? How many cases has he messed up because he didn’t realize the truth in time? Because he didn’t know what to focus on? Maybe he used to be good at some point, but that’s gone now, just like his shooting skills and Nureyev-- 

Don’t go down there. 

THEIA makes him better, anyways. He sees life differently now, with convenient little popups next to people describing any relevant details that THEIA can pull from online, or wherever the hell Ramses gets his information. Stuff like a list of crimes and arrests and convictions and how many times their spouse has been hospitalized and how many times the neighbours have called the cops because of all of the screaming. 

His knuckles are raw and bloody and aching, his blaster hot in his hands, finger on the trigger. 

(He’s better now.) 

He is. He must be. He cannot be himself. He cannot be Juno Steel. He has to be more, better,  _ different. _ Anything but himself. He won’t be able to live if he’s just himself. He’ll die. 

 

More growing pains. He knuckles his way through it. 

 

“Juno?” a voice that he hasn’t heard since-- (don’t go down there.) 

He turns around to see a man, a list of crimes so, so long, so despicable, so violent. He can barely see the man from how much THEIA is telling him. He doesn’t need to see him. He can see what’s  _ important.  _

“What’s happened to you? What are you doing?” That voice-- (DON’T GO DOWN THERE.) 

The voice cuts out abruptly. 

“ _ The enemy is moving for a concealed weapon,” _ THEIA informs him. She notices stuff he doesn’t all of the time. 

He shoots. The enemy falls. 

Has his blaster always been set to kill? 

(It has.) 

It has. 


End file.
